M.A.G.U.S. subtitled Avagy a Kalandorok krónikái (Or the Adventurer Chronicles), colloquially also known as Mákos (Lucky), Mókus (Squirrel) or the Nagy Ződ' (Ye Big Green), is the secondnote The first was "Harc és Varázslat" (Fight and Sorcery)., most influential and probably only ever marginally successful Hungarian tabletop role-playing game.

It's based on the fantasy novels A Halál Havában (In the month of Death, 1990) and Észak Lángjai (Flames of North, 1991) by Gáspár András and Novák Csanád (they wrote under the Pen Name "Wayne Chapman") and was first published in 1993, then republished with minor bugfixes several times in the following years culminating in a major revision in 1999 that got a cold reception. In 2004 the game got a d20 rewrite and later in 2007 a modernized edition of its original system. It suffered a lot of publisher changes, dispute between the creators in its turbulent history.

The gamesystem is quite rules heavy (not Rolemaster level but still) and uses percentage based resolution except when it doesn't. To elaborate basically from the four different editions only the d20 one had a unified mechanic. The whole original system is a mess of percentage based, base number and add roll, roll under with d10, etc. mechanics.

Gameplay and Story Segregation: There is the game and the gamestats that say what a character can or cannot do, and there are the official novels and other assorted background material that give backstory, flavor etc. They don't match.

Hot Witch: Not mandatory, but witches get a bonus on their "Beauty" roll, and a spell that turns them into one if they aren't.

Light Is Not Good / Good Is Not Nice: Depending of interpretation the one god Domvik, Sogron the Kyr god of fire (and knowledge) counts too, and the Elves. Generally it is hard to find nice and merciful gods, old races or anyone powerful even when they embody light or are nominally good.

Numerological Motif: The Kyr (and any culture they fathered) had/have an obsession with odd numbers... even numbers are either considered unlucky or are pretended to not exist.

Plagiarism: Not the game itself even if it wasn't as original as its developers liked to pretend, but some of the art was... researched. Like this◊ little demonstration. Left one is from the Cyberpunk 2020 Roleplaying Game the right from A Démon Átka (The Demon's Curse) adventure module published for M.A.G.U.S..

Playing with Fire: Several magic users but it's the stated specialty of the Sogronite Fire Mages.

Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: Neither Hungarian Fantasy/RPG writers apparently, all data seems to be basically Ass Pull which resulted in oddities like the gameworld being bigger than Pangaea and the frozen north having an average temperature of +11 degrees Celsius.

Sourcebook: In it's long run it got several. Some of the more notable:

Worldbooks: Summarium: A teremtés könyvei (Summarium: The books of creation) is the most comprehensive setting book evernote Actually this was meant to be the first book of a three book total revision... which never got published.; Geoframia kivonatok: Enoszuke (Excerpts from Geoframia: Enoszuke) about the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Japan.

Catalogs: The Bestiárium (Bestiary) even got three different editions.

Rule expansions: Második törvénykönyv (The Second Book of Law) which had new classes, races, weapons and special rules to make combat even more complicated; Új tekercsek (The New Scrolls) which is basically what ever got written (and not really playtested) from the Summarium rule revision so a Point Buy system and a revision of the skills (but still no unified mechanic).

A Wizard Did It: Well, the standard answer for implausible being and ability combinations (like the 'stealth giant') were "Inherited magical abilities" which is just one step away from "It's magic, we don't have to explain it!".

Also for the geographical and larger scale weirdness (Anything that would fit under Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale and various Artistic License tropes) "It's a created world" ... so "The Gods Did It!". Which one and how (as there were many and the rise of humanity was a fairly recent event according to setting material) was never explained.

You Keep Using That Word: Many, but maybe the most aggravating was their tendency to use készség to mean thing/object when in contemporary Hungarian its only valid meaning is ability/willingness (and in the novels they also tended to put it in italic, someone was obviously very proud of it).

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